• John and Alieta Eck, MDs, for their first-century solution to twenty-first century needs. With 46 million people in this country uninsured, we need an innovative solution apart from the place of employment and apart from the government. To read the rest of the story, go to www.zhcenter.org and check out their history, mission statement, newsletter, and a host of other information. For their article, "Are you really insured?," go to www.healthplanusa.net/AE-AreYouReallyInsured.htm.

• PATMOS EmergiClinic - where Robert Berry, MD, an emergency physician and internist practices. To read his story and the background for naming his clinic PATMOS EmergiClinic - the island where John was exiled and an acronym for "payment at time of service," go to www.emergiclinic.com. To read more on Dr Berry, please click on the various topics at his website.

• PRIVATE NEUROLOGY is a Third-Party-Free Practice in Derby, NY with Larry Huntoon, MD, PhD, FANN. http://home.earthlink.net/~doctorlrhuntoon/. Dr Huntoon does not allow any HMO or government interference in your medical care. "Since I am not forced to use CPT codes and ICD-9 codes (coding numbers required on claim forms) in our practice, I have been able to keep our fee structure very simple." I have no interest in "playing games" so as to "run up the bill." My goal is to provide competent, compassionate, ethical care at a price that patients can afford. I also believe in an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Please Note that PAYMENT IS EXPECTED AT THE TIME OF SERVICE. Private Neurology also guarantees that medical records in our office are kept totally private and confidential - in accordance with the Oath of Hippocrates. Since I am a non-covered entity under HIPAA, your medical records are safe from the increased risk of disclosure under HIPAA law.

• Michael J. Harris, MD - www.northernurology.com - an active member in the American Urological Association, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Societe' Internationale D'Urologie, has an active cash'n carry practice in urology in Traverse City, Michigan. He has no contracts, no Medicare, Medicaid, no HIPAA, just patient care. Dr Harris is nationally recognized for his medical care system reform initiatives. To understand that Medical Bureaucrats and Administrators are basically Medical Illiterates telling the experts how to practice medicine, be sure to savor his article on "Administrativectomy: The Cure For Toxic Bureaucratosis" at www.northernurology.com/articles/healthcarereform/administrativectomy.html.

• Dr Vern Cherewatenko concerning success in restoring private-based medical practice which has grown internationally through the SimpleCare model network. Dr Vern calls his practice PIFATOS - Pay In Full At Time Of Service, the "Cash-Based Revolution." The patient pays in full before leaving. Because doctor charges are anywhere from 25-50 percent inflated due to administrative costs caused by the health insurance industry, you'll be paying drastically reduced rates for your medical expenses. In conjunction with a regular catastrophic health insurance policy to cover extremely costly procedures, PIFATOS can save the average healthy adult and/or family up to $5000/year! To read the rest of the story, go to www.simplecare.com. 

• Dr David MacDonald started Liberty Health Group. To compare the traditional health insurance model with the Liberty high-deductible model, go to www.libertyhealthgroup.com/Liberty_Solutions.htm. There is extensive data available for your study. Dr Dave is available to speak to your group on a consultative basis.

• Madeleine Pelner Cosman, JD, PhD, Esq, who has made important efforts in restoring accountability in health care, has died (1937-2006). Her obituary is at www.signonsandiego.com/news/obituaries/20060311-9999-1m11cosman.html. She will be remembered for her important work, Who Owns Your Body, which is reviewed at www.delmeyer.net/bkrev_WhoOwnsYourBody.htm. Please go to www.healthplanusa.net/MPCosman.htm to view some of her articles that highlight the government's efforts in criminalizing medicine. For other OpEd articles that are important to the practice of medicine and health care in general, click on her name at www.healthcarecom.net/OpEd.htm.

• David J Gibson, MD, Consulting Partner of Illumination Medical, Inc. has made important contributions to the free Medical MarketPlace in speeches and writings. His series of articles in Sacramento Medicine can be found at www.ssvms.org. To read his "Lessons from the Past," go to www.ssvms.org/articles/0403gibson.asp. For additional articles, such as the cost of Single Payer, go to www.healthplanusa.net/DGSinglePayer.htm; for Health Care Inflation, go to www.healthplanusa.net/DGHealthCareInflation.htm.

• Dr Richard B Willner, President, Center Peer Review Justice Inc, states: We are a group of healthcare doctors -- physicians, podiatrists, dentists, osteopaths -- who have experienced and/or witnessed the tragedy of the perversion of medical peer review by malice and bad faith. We have seen the statutory immunity, which is provided to our "peers" for the purposes of quality assurance and credentialing, used as cover to allow those "peers" to ruin careers and reputations to further their own, usually monetary agenda of destroying the competition. We are dedicated to the exposure, conviction, and sanction of any and all doctors, and affiliated hospitals, HMOs, medical boards, and other such institutions, who would use peer review as a weapon to unfairly destroy other professionals. Read the rest of the story, as well as a wealth of information, at www.peerreview.org.

• Semmelweis Society International, Verner S. Waite MD, FACS, Founder; Henry Butler MD, FACS, President; Ralph Bard MD, JD, Vice President; W. Hinnant MD, JD, Secretary-Treasurer; is named after Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, MD (1818-1865), an obstetrician who has been hailed as the savior of mothers. He noted maternal mortality of 25-30 percent in the obstetrical clinic in Vienna. He also noted that the first division of the clinic run by medical students had a death rate 2-3 times as high as the second division run by midwives. He also noticed that medical students came from the dissecting room to the maternity ward. He ordered the students to wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime before each examination. The maternal mortality dropped, and by 1848 no women died in childbirth in his division. He lost his appointment the following year and was unable to obtain a teaching appointment Although ahead of his peers, he was not accepted by them. When Dr Verner Waite received similar treatment from a hospital, he organized the Semmelweis Society with his own funds using Dr Semmelweis as a model: To read the article he wrote at my request for Sacramento Medicine when I was editor in 1994, see www.delmeyer.net/HMCPeerRev.htm. To see Attorney Sharon Kime's response, as well as the California Medical Board response, see www.delmeyer.net/HMCPeerRev.htm. Scroll down to read some very interesting letters to the editor from the Medical Board of California, from a member of the MBC, and from Deane Hillsman, MD.
  To view some horror stories of atrocities against physicians and how organized medicine still treats this problem, please go to www.semmelweissociety.net.

• Dennis Gabos, MD, President of the Society for the Education of Physicians and Patients (SEPP), is making efforts in Protecting, Preserving, and Promoting the Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities of Patients and Health Care Professionals. For more information, go to www.sepp.net.

• Robert J Cihak, MD, former president of the AAPS, and Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D, write an informative Medicine Men column at NewsMax. Please log on to review the last five weeks' topics or click on archives to see the last two years' topics at www.newsmax.com/pundits/Medicine_Men.shtml. This week's column is on "A Solution for Global Warming" and can be found at www.newsmax.com/medicine_men/global_warming_solution/2008/04/09/86586.html.

• The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (www.AAPSonline.org), The Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943, representing physicians in their struggles against bureaucratic medicine, loss of medical privacy, and intrusion by the government into the personal and confidential relationship between patients and their physicians. Be sure to scroll down on the left to departments and click on News of the Day in Perspective. Don't miss the "AAPS News," written by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site, which provides valuable information on a monthly basis. Read Leveling. Scroll further to the official organ, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, with Larry Huntoon, MD, PhD, a neurologist in New York, as the Editor-in-Chief. www.jpands.org/. There are a number of important articles that can be accessed from the Table of Contents page of the current issue. Don't miss the special articles, commentaries, medical controversies, or the extensive book review section which covers the relevant great books this month.

Words of Wisdom:  

Edward Langley, Artist 1928-1995: What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.

Peter F. Drucker, on Business & Professional Ethics: "Primum non nocere - 'First do no Harm.'" The first responsibility of a professional was spelled out clearly, 2,500 years ago, in the Hippocratic Oath of the Greek physician: "above all, not knowingly to do harm." No professional, be she doctor, lawyer, or manager, can promise that she will indeed do good for her client. All she can promise that she will not knowingly do harm. And the client, in turn, must be able to trust the professional not knowingly to do the client harm. Otherwise, he cannot trust her at all.

C. S. Lewis: (1944) Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.

Some Recent Postings:

DIETS DON'T WORK  by Bob Schwartz, PhD www.delmeyer.net/bkrev_DietsDon'tWork.htm

DIETS STILL DON'T WORK  by Bob Schwartz, PhD, Breakthru Publishing www.delmeyer.net/bkrev_DietsStillDon'tWork.htm

In Memoriam: 

Ollie Johnston, Apr 24th 2008, From The Economist

IF YOU interviewed Ollie Johnston in the last years of his life, sooner or later he would start to change. The trim body, lean as a whippet's, would begin to prowl and strut, then round on you with an accusing, pointing arm, just like the evil prosecutor in "Toad of Toad Hall". Or he would cock his head, gyrate it, fidget and twitch, for all the world like the rabbit Thumper as he explains to Bambi why he doesn't like clover greens. He would skip and stumble to play little Penny carrying a slithering cat in "The Rescuers", or tilt stiffly from side to side like a waiter-penguin from "Mary Poppins".

All these vignettes, performed in his 80s with a young man's grace, had come from decades of observation. For the plump, elderly Good Fairies in "Sleeping Beauty" (1959) Mr Johnston and Frank Thomas, his lifelong friend and fellow animator, would lurk behind little old ladies in the supermarket, noting how they bounced as they walked and how they pinned up their hair. For "101 Dalmatians" (1961), in which he drew the parent-dogs Pongo and Perdita, he studied every nuance of ears, noses, flanks and tails. Dog-nous had helped him too in his first job as an assistant animator, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), in which Dopey's paw-flapping stupidity was based on hound behaviour.

Ollie Johnston, last of Disney's elite animators, died on April 14th, aged 95

Of the elite animators Walt Disney gathered round him in the 1930s, the "Nine Old Men" as he called them, it was generally agreed that there was none like Mr Johnston. His background was suitable enough for the work: middle-class Californian, Stanford University art department, Chouinard art school in Los Angeles, until in 1935 he was hired, at $17 a week, by the studios in Burbank. But his approach was different. Where his colleagues focused on the "extremes", the beginning or end of an action, he worked like an "in-betweener", filling in with his quick, clear lines the smallest progressions of movement in a cheek, a hand or a leg, finding and sustaining the inner rhythm of the character.

The trouble with noses

What mattered for him was not movement, but the emotions behind it. "What is the character thinking, and why does he feel that way?" was the question he asked himself as he sat down to draw. As a student he had dreamed of being a magazine illustrator, producing portraits so alluring that buyers would feel they had to read the stories. Here his portraits could actually move and breathe. They could touch hands. He wanted to know the whole track of their lives to that moment, so that the way Sneezy blew his nose, or the delight of first-mate Smee as he sucked the liquor from his thumb in "Peter Pan" (1953), or the shambling dance of the bear Baloo in "The Jungle Book" (1967) would be informed by a universe of experience.

Some characters were harder than others. Mr Johnston could never find the spark in Lewis Carroll's Alice, with her prim hairband and her white apron, and thought the film a failure. In "Bambi", where he excelled himself with the pathos of the fawn discovering his mother dead in the snow, or acknowledging with a slight, shy droop of the head the magnificence of his father, or stumbling through the forest on legs as thin as the grass, he found the face too bland, and the nose too short, to register as much as he wanted. He had more nose to work with in "Pinocchio" in 1940; but there, typically, he drew just the beginning of the transformation, as the puppet-boy, "who doesn't know a darn thing", was suddenly, astonishingly confronted by the Blue Fairy and his own lies. The six-foot-long nose, with a bird's nest swaying at the end of it, was somebody else's thought.

The work of a Disney animator, as the studios roared from strength to strength, could be as numbing as the daily grind on any other production line. The constant perusal of the storyboards pinned along the wall; the mute challenge of the pile of medium-grade bond paper and the pencil-sharpener full of shavings; the exposure-sheet tacked to the drawing-board, giving the exact times allotted to the scene and the dialogue; the knowledge that 30 feet of drawings, at 16 drawings a foot, would have a running time of merely 20 seconds. But Mr Johnston made light of it, adoring the work and passing on his expertise enthusiastically to others. The only thing he possibly loved more was the inch-scale hand-built railway that ran round his garden, which with huffing and panting and articulated pistons moved much like an ideal cartoon character: everything functional, everything with a purpose.

Those who came to see him in the studios might find him acting, rather than drawing. Disney routinely brought in actors to help the animators, but their bodies and faces seldom matched up to the ones Mr Johnston had in his mind, with their flowing capacity to squash, stretch and rebound. He could sometimes give the idea better himself, by getting up and doing. When his characters had to speak he would draw with a mirror beside him, giving them the lines of his own mouth making letters and his own eyebrows rising and falling. "You get an idea, your eyes begin to widen," he noted. "Your cheeks start to come up; your whole face moves...The entire pose should express the thought." Small wonder that so much of his own life got into his drawings, and so much of their life into him.

www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11081964

On This Date in History - April 29: 

On this date in 1894, Jacob S. Coxey, an Ohioan, led a group of 400 unemployed on a march to Washington, DC. Coxey was arrested for trespassing at the Capitol and the "army" broke up. The name "Coxey's Army" became a symbol for raggedy groups and parades on behalf of lost causes. Coxey wanted the government to finance a public works program of some half a billion dollars to provide work for the unemployed. He thought the government could do this simply by printing that amount of new money. Coxey may be gone; but similar proposals keep popping - and every one still seems to look to Uncle Sam for help. But it only took FDR forty years later to completely destroy the American Dream and Ambition. How tragic to have bred this degree of dependency - which in other instances would be termed a mental condition.

On this date in 1863, William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco. Only a few years after Coxey's army went into history, William Randolph Hearst was helping to raise an Army to fight a war some historians think he helped mightily to start. That was the Spanish American War, which Hearst's newspaper, the New York Journal, kept calling for until it was declared. The war was a success for the country and for Hearst. But in later years, the Hearst chain of newspapers began to shrink, and the lands whose liberty from Spain had been won in the Spanish-American War did not prove to be islands of serenity and happiness. The war for circulation between Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer in New York produced a whole era of sensationalist journalism. It was sardonic that this kind of journalism later had one of its greatest field days in reporting the kidnapping and Symbionese Liberation Army days of William Randolph Hearst's granddaughter, Patty Hearst. The world seemed to have come a long way from the time of the grandfather to the time of the grandchild. It makes one wonder with what perspective our grandchildren will look back at what we are doing today

After Leonard and Thelma Spinrad

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• The National Center for Policy Analysis, John C Goodman, PhD, President, who along with Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick wrote Lives at Risk issues a weekly Health Policy Digest, a health summary of the full NCPA daily report. You may log on at www.ncpa.org and register to receive one or more of these reports. Read the real news about Medicare and Social Security.

• Pacific Research Institute, (www.pacificresearch.org) Sally C Pipes, President and CEO, John R Graham, Director of Health Care Studies, publish a monthly Health Policy Prescription newsletter, which is very timely to our current health care situation. You may signup to receive their newsletters via email by clicking on the email tab or directly access their health care blog. Read John Graham's Blog: San Francisco's Health Access Plan Has Raised $6 Million - Now It Only Needs $194 Million More To Achieve "Universal" Health Care.

• The Mercatus Center at George Mason University (www.mercatus.org) is a strong advocate for accountability in government. Maurice McTigue, QSO, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar, a former member of Parliament and cabinet minister in New Zealand, is now director of the Mercatus Center's Government Accountability Project. Join the Mercatus Center for Excellence in Government. Read another success story on Empowering the Poor.

• The National Association of Health Underwriters, www.NAHU.org. The NAHU's Vision Statement: Every American will have access to private sector solutions for health, financial and retirement security and the services of insurance professionals. There are numerous important issues listed on the opening page.  Be sure to scan their professional journal, Health Insurance Underwriters (HIU), for articles of importance in the Health Insurance MarketPlace. www.nahu.org/publications/hiu/index.htm. The HIU magazine, with Jim Hostetler as the executive editor, covers technology, legislation and product news - everything that affects how health insurance professionals do business. Be sure to review the current articles listed on their table of contents at  http://www.hiu-digital.com/hiu/200803/. To see my recent column, go to http://hiu.nahu.org/article.asp?article=1660&paper=0&cat=137

• The Galen Institute, Grace-Marie Turner President and Founder, has a weekly Health Policy Newsletter sent every Friday to which you may subscribe by logging on at www.galen.org. A new study of purchasers of Health Savings Accounts shows that the new health care financing arrangements are appealing to those who previously were shut out of the insurance market, to families, to older Americans, and to workers of all income levels. Simply browse by topic on the opening page.

• Greg Scandlen, an expert in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) has embarked on a new mission: Consumers for Health Care Choices (CHCC). To read the initial series of his newsletter, Consumers Power Reports, go to www.chcchoices.org/publications.html. To join, go to www.chcchoices.org/join.html.  Be sure to read Prescription for change:  Employers, insurers, providers, and the government have all taken their turn at trying to fix American Health Care. Now it's the Consumers turn. Read about MSAs and Medicare.

• The Heartland Institute, www.heartland.org, publishes the Health Care News. Read the late Conrad F Meier on What is Free-Market Health Care?. You may sign up for their health care email newsletter at www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10478. Read an update on HSAs.

• The Foundation for Economic Education, www.fee.org, has been publishing The Freeman - Ideas On Liberty, Freedom's Magazine, for over 50 years, with Richard M Ebeling, PhD, President, and Sheldon Richman as editor. Having bound copies of this running treatise on free-market economics for over 40 years, I still take pleasure in the relevant articles by Leonard Read and others who have devoted their lives to the cause of liberty. I have a patient who has read this journal since it was a mimeographed newsletter fifty years ago. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a fascinating thing. You can never be entirely sure what the second-, third-, etc. -order effects of any action will be. This is especially so with government policy because centralized decision-making can do so much damage to so many people. That ought to humble the politicians and bureaucrats, but it never does.

• The Council for Affordable Health Insurance, www.cahi.org/index.asp, founded by Greg Scandlen in 1991, where he served as CEO for five years, is an association of insurance companies, actuarial firms, legislative consultants, physicians and insurance agents. Their mission is to develop and promote free-market solutions to America's health-care challenges by enabling a robust and competitive health insurance market that will achieve and maintain access to affordable, high-quality health care for all Americans. "The belief that more medical care means better medical care is deeply entrenched . . . Our study suggests that perhaps a third of medical spending is now devoted to services that don't appear to improve health or the quality of care–and may even make things worse." Read the current update on the 2008 Candidates Health Care Proposals.

• The Independence Institute, www.i2i.org, is a free-market think-tank in Golden, Colorado, that has a Health Care Policy Center, with Linda Gorman as Director. Be sure to sign up for the monthly Health Care Policy Center Newsletter at www.i2i.org/healthcarecenter.aspx. Read her latest newsletter at http://www.i2i.org/articles/HCPCjournal1.pdf.

• Martin Masse, Director of Publications at the Montreal Economic Institute, is the publisher of the webzine: Le Quebecois Libre. Please log on at www.quebecoislibre.org/apmasse.htm to review his free-market based articles, some of which will allow you to brush up on your French. You may also register to receive copies of their webzine on a regular basis. This month, read the treatise on Market Failures And Externalities Do Not Justify Government Intervention.

• The Fraser Institute, an independent public policy organization, focuses on the role competitive markets play in providing for the economic and social well being of all Canadians. Canadians celebrated Tax Freedom Day on June 28, the date they stopped paying taxes and started working for themselves. Log on at www.fraserinstitute.ca for an overview of the extensive research articles that are available. You may want to go directly to their health research section at www.fraserinstitute.ca/health/index.asp?snav=he. This month, you might like to read what real progressive taxation looks and feels like: Total tax bill for average Canadian family has increased by more than 1,700 percent since 1961.

• The Heritage Foundation, www.heritage.org/, founded in 1973, is a research and educational institute whose mission is to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense. The Center for Health Policy Studies supports and does extensive research on health care policy that is readily available at their site. This month, be sure to read another Medicare story on Congress Must Not Ignore the Medicare Trustees' Warning.

• The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, President, is a rich source of free-market materials, probably the best daily course in economics we've seen. If you read these essays on a daily basis, it would probably be equivalent to taking Economics 11 and 51 in college. Please log on at www.mises.org to obtain the foundation's daily reports. You may also log on to Lew's premier free-market site at www.lewrockwell.com to read some of his lectures to medical groups. To learn how state medicine subsidizes illness, see www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/sickness.html; or to find out why anyone would want to be an MD today, see www.lewrockwell.com/klassen/klassen46.html.

• CATO. The Cato Institute (www.cato.org) was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, with Charles Koch of Koch Industries. It is a nonprofit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute is named for Cato's Letters, a series of pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The Mission: The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. Ed Crane reminds us that the framers of the Constitution designed to protect our liberty through a system of federalism and divided powers so that most of the governance would be at the state level where abuse of power would be limited by the citizens' ability to choose among 13 (and now 50) different systems of state government. Thus, we could all seek our favorite moral turpitude and live in our comfort zone recognizing our differences and still be proud of our unity as Americans. Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute's Director of Health Policy Studies. Read his bio at www.cato.org/people/cannon.html.

• The Ethan Allen Institute, www.ethanallen.org/index2.html, is one of some 41 similar but independent state organizations associated with the State Policy Network (SPN). The mission is to put into practice the fundamentals of a free society: individual liberty, private property, competitive free enterprise, limited and frugal government, strong local communities, personal responsibility, and expanded opportunity for human endeavor.

• The Free State Project, with a goal of Liberty in Our Lifetime, http://freestateproject.org/, is an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property. The success of the Project would likely entail reductions in taxation and regulation, reforms at all levels of government to expand individual rights and free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world. [It is indeed a tragedy that the burden of government in the U.S., a freedom society for its first 150 years, is so great that people want to escape to a state solely for the purpose of reducing that oppression. We hope this gives each of us an impetus to restore freedom from government intrusion in our own state.]

• The St. Croix Review, a bimonthly journal of ideas, recognizes that the world is very dangerous. Conservatives are staunch defenders of the homeland. But as Russell Kirk believed, war time allows the federal government grow at a frightful pace. We expect government to win the wars we engage, and we expect that our borders be guarded. But St Croix feels the impulses of the Administration and Congress are often misguided. The politicians of both parties in Washington overreach so that we see with disgust the explosion of earmarks and perpetually increasing spending on programs that have nothing to do with winning the war.  There is too much power given to Washington. Even in war time we have to push for limited government - while giving the government the necessary tools to win the war. To read a variety of articles in this arena, please go to www.stcroixreview.com.

• Hillsdale College, the premier small liberal arts college in southern Michigan with about 1,200 students, was founded in 1844 with the mission of "educating for liberty." It is proud of its principled refusal to accept any federal funds, even in the form of student grants and loans, and of its historic policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity. The price of freedom is never cheap. While schools throughout the nation are bowing to an unconstitutional federal mandate that schools must adopt a Constitution Day curriculum each September 17^th or lose federal funds, Hillsdale students take a semester-long course on the Constitution restoring civics education and developing a civics textbook, a Constitution Reader. You may log on at www.hillsdale.edu to register for the annual weeklong von Mises Seminars, held every February, or their famous Shavano Institute. Congratulations to Hillsdale for its national rankings in the USNews College rankings. Changes in the Carnegie classifications, along with Hillsdale's continuing rise to national prominence, prompted the Foundation to move the College from the regional to the national liberal arts college classification. Please log on and register to receive Imprimis, their national speech digest that reaches more than one million readers each month. This month, read Charles Kessler, Editor, Claremont Review of Books on "Limited Government: Are the Good Times Really Over?" The last ten years of Imprimis are archived www.hillsdale.edu/hctools/imprimis_archive/.

Words of Wisdom:  

The Power to tax involves the power to destroy. -Chief Justice John Marshall, Supreme Court decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, March 6, 1819.

Government is an endless pursuit of new ways to tax. -Anonymous Aphorisms

Why do they couple taxes and death? Death only comes once. -Anonymous Aphorisms

Some Recent and Timely Postings:

DIETS DON'T WORK, by Bob Schwartz, PhD, Breakthru Publishing, Houston, Texas, Third Revised Edition, 149 pp, $12.95 © 1996 www.delmeyer.net/bkrev_DietsDon'tWork.htm

THE CANCER WARD by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Translated by Nicholas Bethel and David Burg, Noonday Press, New York, © 1974. (Russian edition 1968) www.healthcarecom.net/bkrev_CancerWard.htm

CAN THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY SURVIVE? www.healthcarecom.net/OE_UniversalHealthCareDefeatedInCA.htm

In Memoriam: 

Film Legend Charlton Heston Dead at 84, By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, April 6, 2008

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur" and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84.

The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said. He declined to comment on the cause of death or provide further details.

"Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played," Heston's family said in a statement. "No one could ask for a fuller life than his. No man could have given more to his family, to his profession, and to his country."

Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease, saying, "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."

With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal star during the period when Hollywood was filling movie screens with panoramas depicting the religious and historical past.  

"I have a face that belongs in another century," he often remarked.

Publicist Michael Levine, who represented Heston for about 20 years, said the actor's passing represented the end of an iconic era for cinema. "If Hollywood had a Mt. Rushmore, Heston's face would be on it," Levine said.

The actor assumed the role of leader offscreen as well. He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chairman of the American Film Institute and marched in the civil rights movement of the 1950s.

With age, he grew more conservative and campaigned for conservative candidates. In June 1998, Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle.

He delivered a jab at then-President Clinton, saying, "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns." Heston stepped down as NRA president in April 2003, telling members his five years in office were "quite a ride. ... I loved every minute of it."

Later that year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. "The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life," President Bush said at the time.

"America has lost a great patriot. The Second Amendment has lost a faithful friend," said Wayne LaPierre, of the National Rifle Association of America, in a statement. "So have I, and so have four million NRA members and eighty million gun owners. And so has every American who cares about the Bill of Rights, individual liberty, and Freedom.

Heston engaged in a lengthy feud with liberal Ed Asner during the latter's tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild. His latter-day activism almost overshadowed his achievements as an actor, which were considerable.

Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the midcentury. "Ben-Hur" won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent "Titanic" (1997) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). Heston's other hits include: "The Ten Commandments,""El Cid,""55 Days at Peking,""Planet of the Apes" and "Earthquake."

He liked to cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed:

Andrew Jackson ("The President's Lady,""The Buccaneer"), Moses ("The Ten Commandments"), title role of "El Cid," John the Baptist ("The Greatest Story Ever Told"), Michelangelo ("The Agony and the Ecstasy"), General Gordon ("Khartoum"), Marc Antony ("Julius Caesar,""Antony and Cleopatra"), Cardinal Richelieu ("The Three Musketeers"), Henry VIII ("The Prince and the Pauper").

Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist. He had the title role in "Peer Gynt" in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley's 1949 version of "Julius Caesar," for which Heston was paid $50 a week.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis ("Casablanca") spotted Heston in a 1950 television production of "Wuthering Heights" and offered him a contract. When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theater and television, he replied, "Well, maybe just for one film to see what it's like."

Heston earned star billing from his first Hollywood movie, "Dark City," a 1950 film noir. Cecil B. DeMille next cast him as the circus manager in the all-star "The Greatest Show On Earth," named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952. More movies followed.

Most were forgettable low-budget films, and Heston seemed destined to remain an undistinguished action star. His old boss DeMille rescued him.

The director had long planned a new version of "The Ten Commandments," which he had made as a silent in 1923 with a radically different approach that combined biblical and modern stories. He was struck by Heston's facial resemblance to Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses, especially the similar broken nose, and put the actor through a long series of tests before giving him the role.

The Hestons' newborn, Fraser Clarke Heston, played the role of the infant Moses in the film.

More films followed: the eccentric thriller "Touch of Evil," directed by Orson Welles; William Wyler's "The Big Country," costarring with Gregory Peck; a sea saga, "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" with Gary Cooper.

Then his greatest role: "Ben-Hur."

Heston wasn't the first to be considered for the remake of 1925 biblical epic. Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster and Rock Hudson had declined the film. Heston plunged into the role, rehearsing two months for the furious chariot race.

He railed at suggestions the race had been shot with a double: "I couldn't drive it well, but that wasn't necessary. All I had to do was stay on board so they could shoot me there. I didn't have to worry; MGM guaranteed I would win the race."

The huge success of "Ben-Hur" and Heston's Oscar made him one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood. He combined big-screen epics like "El Cid" and "55 Days at Peking" with lesser ones such as "Diamond Head,""Will Penny" and "Airport 1975." In his later years he played cameos in such films as "Wayne's World 2" and "Tombstone."

He often returned to the theater, appearing in such plays as "A Long Day's Journey into Night" and "A Man for All Seasons." He starred as a tycoon in the prime-time soap opera, "The Colbys," a two-season spinoff of "Dynasty."

At his birth in a Chicago suburb on Oct. 4, 1923, his name was Charles Carter. His parents moved to St. Helen, Mich., where his father, Russell Carter, operated a lumber mill. Growing up in the Michigan woods with almost no playmates, young Charles read books of adventure and devised his own games while wandering the countryside with his rifle.

Charles's parents divorced, and she married Chester Heston, a factory plant superintendent in Wilmette, Ill., an upscale north Chicago suburb. Shy and feeling displaced in the big city, the boy had trouble adjusting to the new high school. He took refuge in the drama department.

"What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people," he said in a 1986 interview. "In those days I wasn't satisfied with being me."

Calling himself Charlton Heston from his mother's maiden name and his stepfather's last name, he won an acting scholarship to Northwestern University in 1941. He excelled in campus plays and appeared on Chicago radio. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and served as a radio-gunner in the Aleutians.

In 1944 he married another Northwestern drama student, Lydia Clarke, and after his army discharge in 1947, they moved to New York to seek acting jobs. Finding none, they hired on as codirectors and principal actors at a summer theater in Asheville, N.C.

Back in New York, both Hestons began finding work. With his strong 6-feet-2 build and craggily handsome face, Heston won roles in TV soap operas, plays ("Antony and Cleopatra" with Katherine Cornell) and live TV dramas such as "Julius Caesar,""Macbeth,""The Taming of the Shrew" and "Of Human Bondage."

Heston wrote several books: "The Actor's Life: Journals 1956-1976," published in 1978; "Beijing Diary: 1990," concerning his direction of the play "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" in Chinese; "In the Arena: An Autobiography," 1995; and "Charlton Heston's Hollywood: 50 Years of American Filmmaking," 1998.

Besides Fraser, the Hestons had a daughter, Holly Ann, born Aug. 2, 1961. The couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1994 at a party with Hollywood and political friends. They had been married 64 years when he died.

In late years, Heston drew as much publicity for his crusades as for his performances. In addition to his NRA work, he campaigned for Republican presidential and congressional candidates and against affirmative action. . .

At a Time Warner stockholders meeting, he castigated the company for releasing an Ice-T album that purportedly encouraged cop killing.

Heston wrote in "In the Arena" that he was proud of what he did "though now I'll surely never be offered another film by Warners, nor get a good review in Time. On the other hand, I doubt I'll get a traffic ticket very soon."

Read: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2008/04/05/entertainment/e205815D85.DTL&type=printable.

For The Economist Obituary, go to www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11004056.

On This Date in History - April 15: 

On this date in 1965, the Sixteenth President of the United States died from wounds inflicted by assassin John Wilkes Booth.

On this date in 1912, the S. S. Titanic, the invincible ship, sank with loss of more than 1500 lives. It was mortally wounded by an iceberg the previous night.

On this date in 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born in the city of Vinci in Tuscany. The world is a great deal richer for having had a versatile man of genius like Leonardo in it.

On this date, the United States Income Taxes are due for the previous year. Some years ago, a gentleman with a penchant for designating special days announced that from that point on, April 15 was to be known as National Hostility Day, a day of ill feeling for many taxpayers who feel put upon indeed. Maybe it should be a national day for mourning the huge mistake that was made in ratifying the 16^th amendment on February 3, 1913, to allow Congress to tax its citizens without any limits. We need another amendment to limit Congress' greed to a 15 percent limit on income tax and a 10 percent limit on interstate excise or import taxes; to limit state legislatures to a five percent income tax and a five percent sales tax; to limit the local government to a one percent property tax and a one percent sales tax. All other taxes, including the corporate taxes, which are taxes on tax, would be outlawed. All polls, the Readers Digest as well as the liberal press, agree that no one should be taxed more than one-fourth of his earnings. The above limits are overly generous, but indeed a first step.

After Leonard and Thelma Spinrad

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